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October 14, 2004

Lynne Cheney: Mention of "Lesbian" Daughter a "Cheap and Tawdry Political Trick"

Nice. It's about time to call these assholes on this:

Lynne Cheney issued her post-debate rebuke to a cheering crowd outside Pittsburgh. "The only thing I can conclude is he is not a good man. I'm speaking as a mom," she said. "What a cheap and tawdry political trick."
Steven Fisher, communications director of the Human Rights Campaign, the nation's largest gay and lesbian political organization, said Kerry "was speaking to millions of American families who, like the Cheneys, have gay friends and family members."

Kerry's running mate, Sen. John Edwards (N.C.), also made a reference to the sexual orientation of Cheney's daughter, during the vice presidential debates, and Republicans complained that it was an underhanded way of trying to hurt the Bush-Cheney ticket with religious conservatives.

It's a cocksucker manuever, no doubt about that. And, lest I be accused of being homophobic myself, I mean "cocksucker" in its broader sense, i.e., a sucker of more metaphoric cock.

And would you look at this? Even the ultra-liberal New York Times is now forced to notice this nasty fart of a tactic. I guess the Times' commitment to actual sexual tolerance exceeds its gonzo Democratic partisanship-- for once:

Forget his health care plan. Forget abortion and embryonic stem cell research. Forget even how many times he did or did not vote to raise taxes. Senator John Kerry may have lost three critical votes with a simple aside, when he invoked Vice President Dick Cheney's lesbian daughter as part of an answer on same-sex marriage.
"That is very unfair," blurted Patsey Farrell, 64, one of a handful of undecided voters gathered here to watch the final presidential debate Wednesday night. "I'm sorry, that's too personal. That's too hurtful."

Her son-in-law, Kevin Uhde, the 50-year-old elementary school principal who held this pizza party, agreed. "Not by name," he said, shaking his head at Mr. Kerry on the 24-inch Phillips television set a few yards away. "Why single out one person?"

And Mr. Uhde's wife, Karlen, added, "I think it's like a low blow."

Charming man, this John Kerry.

He nastilly injects passive-aggressive homophobia into debates with the ferocity of a, say, Jenjis Khan.

posted by Ace at 03:18 AM

Comments

Steven Fisher, communications director of the Human Rights Campaign, the nation's largest gay and lesbian political organization, said Kerry "was speaking to millions of American families who, like the Cheneys, have gay friends and family members."

Sure he was speaking to them, and what he was saying was "If you happen not to agree with my positions on homosexuality [whatever they are this week], I have no compunction about embarrassing your family members - who, as private citizens, may choose not to tell everyone of their sexuality - on national TV! Cause, see, I really RESPECT gay people, unlike the meanie on the other podium. And part of my respect for you and them involves forcing you into positions that you would agree with if you only thought a little harder. Trust me - you'll be thankful in the end."

What a condescending twat. I feel like making a hyperbolic Hollywood threat and saying that if Kerry wins I'm moving to...Australia! (Alas, not gonna happen. But we are heading Utah-wards in January, which should beat Cook County anyway).

Posted by: Sonetka on October 14, 2004 03:32 AM

Give the Senator some credit for figuring out how to use to his advantage a woman that is neither wealthy nor smitten with his manly charms.

Posted by: rw on October 14, 2004 03:35 AM

Just do right by the fags and no more problem.

Posted by: Mary on October 14, 2004 06:00 AM

Why is talking about Mary Cheney "hurtful"? All the other daughters get talked about all the time. We see the Cheney's grandchildren, so we know the other daughter is at least having sex with a man. Mary Cheney was very public in 2000 when they wanted gay votes, now they want her to hide in shame?

Posted by: steve talbert on October 14, 2004 07:39 AM

Hey fuckwad,

Like Ace said, it's not the fact of her being gay, it's the fact that Johnny Douchebag thinks he can score some easy "swing" votes by associating Bush with anything "gay".

Posted by: sentinel on October 14, 2004 08:29 AM

"Metaphoric" cock? Is that like a dildo, or would "dildo" be a simile in this case. No, that doesn't work at all. Oh well, either way, hopefully we can agree that Kerry is, at the least, "fuckstick."

Posted by: Dan on October 14, 2004 08:33 AM

On topic: I about fell off the couch last night when Kerry brought this up. I don't care how tasteful he did it (and it wasn't really) it was wrong on a lot of levels. If Dick Cheney wants to talk about his daughter that's one thing. But that's a family matter that Kerry should have stayed out of.

Off topic: Have you seen the pic of the Bush girls that Wizbang has up? HOLY COW. Love those gams.

Posted by: rorochub on October 14, 2004 09:13 AM

Kerry's campaign manager, Mary Beth Cahill, was interviewed by Chris Wallace on FNC right after the debate. Asked about why Kerry talked about Cheney's daughter, she responded that in this campaign Mary Cheney is "fair game."

What a bunch of low lifes.

Posted by: JK on October 14, 2004 10:09 AM

My husband saw it last night- he said it was 'Lambert Field' on a national level.

"I have three purple hearts and Cheney's daughter is a lesbian. Vote for me!"

Posted by: lauraw on October 14, 2004 10:52 AM

The reference was way over the line and was really jarring as a result.

Posted by: Jane on October 14, 2004 10:53 AM

3) I'm beginning to reckon this weird obsession by Kerry-Edwards on bringing up Dick Cheney's gay daughter every time can't be anything other than a covert pitch for the bigot vote. You can almost feel their frustration that it's a cute looking lesbian and not some queeny guy. Leave other people's kids out of it. Bush doesn't bring up Kerry's daughter wearing a see-through dress to the Cannes Film Festival and oilily profess how much he admires they way they still love her even though she showed her breasts to the entire world.

This is from Mark Steyn over at steynonline.com and it sums up the whole thing to me.

Posted by: Birkel on October 14, 2004 10:56 AM

"Cocksucker" heh

I have said it today already as well. I even mentioned King Cocksucker this morning as well. My entry is long and ranting. Women irritate the hell out of me. Well, the concept of the "woman voter."

When did women start identifying more with a pandering male than a strong decisive man? Gimme a break. Men should be men, not women with penises (Peni?).

Posted by: Jennifer on October 14, 2004 10:56 AM

When Edwards pulled this crap in his debate I figured he was trying to get Cheney to blow his stack, kind of like Paul Newman did to the other team's goalie in Slap Shot. What Kerry thought he was going to accomplish by trying it a second time I can't imagine.

Posted by: Paul Zrimsek on October 14, 2004 11:09 AM

"What Kerry thought he was going to accomplish by trying it a second time I can't imagine."

The achilles heel of Massachusetts liberals is that they really truly do not understand the way the other side thinks.

Kerry really truly thinks that he can peel the ignorant religious rube vote away from Cheney by pointing out that his daughter is a lesbian.

Posted by: lauraw on October 14, 2004 11:40 AM

I'm sure there are some -- some -- intolerant Christians out there put off by Mary Cheney's lesbianism.

But this does demonstrate, as you suggest, the left's inability to see the right as anything other than racist bigoted troglodytes.

I'm against gay marriage. But I honestly don't hate or even strongly dislike gays.

Again and again, the liberals make the mistake of thinking the only reason one could possibly have for opposing racial quotas is racial hatred.

Posted by: ace on October 14, 2004 12:16 PM

"But this does demonstrate, as you suggest, the left's inability to see the right as anything other than racist bigoted troglodytes."

Exactly, exactly what I meant but didn't say very well.

Posted by: lauraw on October 14, 2004 01:07 PM

If Mary Cheney does not want the fact that she is a lesbian brought up during the debates, THEN SHE SHOULDN'T GET ON THE STAGE AT THE END OF THE OF THE VP DEBATE WITH HER LESBIAN LOVER.

Imagine if Kerry had mentioned Cheney's other daughter and the fact that she is married. No one would have said a word. It stands to reason, therefore, that persons offended by Kerry's remark are homophobes. Imagine that, Republicans hate gays. Next thing you'll tell me is that water is wet. Any part that has Alan Keyes running for the Senate should shut the f*** up on any issues involving gays. Keyes states publicly what GOP'ers say privately: We hate fags.

One more thing: For Bush to think that homosexuality is a "choice" shows just how stupid a fu**** idiot he is. No one chooses to be gay. Mr. President, do you choose to be straight?

What the hell is wrong with you people?

Posted by: mklutra on October 14, 2004 06:17 PM

Fundamentally, what's wrong with us is that we despise the Left's divisive, destructive identity politics. We deny that any group should have special rights or be a protected political class. It seems wrong to us that whole sectors of our nation's institutions are closed to qualified persons who hold the "wrong" political views. It disgusts us that the “incorrect” are personally and professionally destroyed, and that the Left mobilizes its vast resources to ensure that darkness covers the ruining of these lives. We believe that the freedom of every American - gay or straight - is ultimately threatened when a coalition of demonstrably totalitarian interest groups comes together for the sole purpose of wielding a terrifying power over their countrymen.

Posted by: Lastango on October 14, 2004 06:56 PM

mklutra,

I'm pretty sure you were one * short on your curse. The point is somebody's family is not an issue for public debate. It's personal. It's private. I, like many of the bloggers who are mistakenly labeled conservative, am a libertarian and don't think the state should be involved in people's private lives.

However, why don't you ask yourself why Kerry and Edwards felt it was appropriate to mention the VP's family? What political purpose could it possibly serve? The point is that Kerry (and Edwards) only felt it necessary to mention one of the daughters so your hypothetical does not withstand scrutiny.

Otherwise, ad hominem attacks do not convince a discerning audience that the other side is hateful. That form of rhetoric will not fly on sites like this. Please go play at DU.

Regards.

Posted by: Birkel on October 14, 2004 10:36 PM

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In more marketing for Project Hail Mary, scientists say they've found the biosigns indicating life growing on an alien planet. It's not proof, just signatures of chemicals that are produced by biological metabolism, and it could be nothing, but scientists think it's a strong sign that this planet is inhabited by something.

In a paper published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, a team of scientists announced the detection of dimethyl sulfide (along with a similar detection of dimethyl disulfide) in the atmosphere of an exoplanet called K2-18b. This is actually the second detection of dimethyl sulfide made on this planet, following a tentative detection in 2023.
Tons of chemicals are detected in the atmospheres of celestial objects every day. But dimethyl sulfide is different, because on Earth, it's only produced by living organisms.
"It is a shock to the system," Nikku Madhusudhan, first author on the paper, told the New York Times. "We spent an enormous amount of time just trying to get rid of the signal."

He means they tried to prove the signal was caused by things other than dimethyl sulfide but they could not.

Artemis moon shot a go, scheduled for 6:24 Eastern time tonight
Great marketing arranged by Amazon to promote Project Hail Mary. Okay not really but it does work out that way.

TJM talks John Boorman, director of Excalibur

Good rickroll

What? Skeleton of the most famous Musketeer, D'Artagnan, possibly discovered in Dutch church closet.
Dumas picked four names of real musketeers out of a history book, D'Artagnan, Athos, Aramis, and Porthos. So there was an actual D'Artagnan, though he made most of the story up. (Or, you know, all of it.)*

Charles de Batz de Castelmore, known as d'Artagnan, the famous musketeer of Kings Louis XIII and Louis XIV, spent his life in the service of the French crown.
The Gascon nobleman inspired Alexandre Dumas's hero in "The Three Musketeers" in the 19th century, a character now known worldwide thanks to the novel and numerous film adaptations.
D'Artagnan was killed during the siege of Maastricht in 1673, and there is a statue honoring the musketeer in the city. His final resting place has remained a mystery ever since.

A lot of Dumas's stories are based on bits of real history. The plot of the >Three Musketeers, about trying to recover lost diamonds from the queen's necklace, was cribbed from the then-almost-contemporaneous Affair of the Queen's Necklace. And the Man in the Iron Mask is based on real accounts of a prisoner forced to wear a mask (though I think it was a velvet mask).
* Oh, I should mention, Dumas says all this, about finding the names in an old book, in the prologue to his novel. But authors lie a lot. They frequently present fictions as based on historic fact. The twist is, he was actually telling the truth here. At least about these four musketeers having actually existed and served under Louis XIV.
Fun fact: You know the beginning of A Fistful of Dollars where the local gunslingers make fun of Clint Eastwood's donkey and Eastwood demands they apologize to the donkey? That's lifted from The Three Musketeers. Rochefort mocks D'Artagnan's old, brokedown farm horse and D'Artagnan is incensed.

A commenter asked which should be read first, The Hobbit of LOTR?
Easy, no question -- read The Hobbit first. It's actually the start of the story and comes first chronologically. It sets up some major characters and major pieces in play in LOTR.
Also, the Hobbit is Beginner-Friendly, which LOTR isn't. The Hobbit really is a delightful book, and a fast read. It's chatty, it's casual, it's exciting, and it's funny. In that dry cheeky British humor way. I love that the narrator is constantly making little asides and commentary, like he's just sitting next to you telling you this story as it occurs to him.
LOTR is a very long story. Fifteen hundred pages or so. The Hobbit is relatively short and very punchy and easy to read. If you don't like The Hobbit, you can skip out on LOTR. If you do like it, you'll be primed to read LOTR.
Oh, I should say: The Hobbit is written as if it's for children, but one of those smart children's stories that are also for adults. Don't worry, there's also real fighting and violence and horror in it, too.
LOTR is written for adults. (It's said that Tolkien wrote both for his children, but LOTR was written 17 years later, when his children were adults.) Some might not like The Hobbit due to its sometimes frivolous tone. Me, I love it. I find it constantly amusing. Both are really good but there is a starkly different tone to both. LOTR is epic, grand, and serious, about a world war, The Hobbit is light and breezy, and about a heist. Though a heist that culminates in a war for the spoils.

The Hobbit Challenge: Read two more chapters. I didn't have much time. Bilbo got the ring.
I noticed a continuity problem. Maybe. Now, as of the time of The Hobbit, it was unknown that this magic ring was in fact a Ring of Power, and it was doubly unknown that it was the Ring of Power, the Master Ring that controlled the others.
But the narrator -- who we will learn in LOTR was none of than Bilbo himself, who wrote the book as "There and Back Again" -- says this about Gollum's ring:
"But who knows how Gollum had come by that present [the Ring], ages ago in the old days when such rings were still at large in the world? Perhaps even the Master who ruled them could not have said."
In another passage, the ring is identified as a "ring of power."
I don't know, I always thought there was a distinction between mere magic rings and the Rings of Power created by Sauron. But this suggests that Bilbo knew this was a ring of power created by Sauron.
Now I don't remember when Bilbo wrote the Hobbit. In the movie, he shows Frodo the book in Rivendell, and I guess he wrote it after he left the Shire. I guess he might have added in the part about the ring being a ring of power created by "the Master" after Gandalf appraised him of his research into the ring.
I never noticed this before. I know Tolkien re-wrote this chapter while he was writing LOTR to make the ring important from the start. And also to make Gollum more sinister and evil, and also to remove the part where Gollum actually offers Bilbo the ring as a "present" -- Bilbo had already found it on his own, but Gollum was wiling to give it away, which obviously is not something the rewritten Gollum would ever do.
But I had no memory of the ring being suggested to be The Ring so early in the tale.

Finish the job, Mr. President!
Melanie Phillips lays out the case for the total destruction of the Iranian government and armed forces. [CBD]

TJM acts like he knows anything about John Wick and screenwriting. It's embarrassing, really.

Podcast: Sefton and CBD talk about how would a peace treaty with Iran work, Democrats defending murderers and rapists, The GOP vs. Dem bench for 2028, composting bodies? And more!

Oh, I forgot to mention this quote from Pete Hegseth, reported by Roger Kimball: "We are sharing the ocean with the Iranian Navy. We're giving them the bottom half."

Batman fires The Batman
Batman is disgusted by the Joachim Phoenix version of Joker
Batman tries to fire Superman
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Forgotten 80s Mystery Click: Red Leather Suit and Sweatband Edition
And I was here to please
I'm even on knees
Makin' love to whoever I please
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Tomorrow is March 25th, "Tolkien Reading Day," because March 25th is the day when the Ring is destroyed in the book. I think I'm going to start the Hobbit tomorrow and read all four books this time.
The only bad part of the trilogy are the Frodo/Sam chapters in The Two Towers. They're repetitive, slow, and mostly about the weather and terrain. But most everything else is good. Weirdly, the Frodo-Sam chapters in Return of the King are exciting and action-packed and among the best in the trilogy. (Though the chapters with everyone else in Return of the King get pretty slow again. Mostly people talking about marching towards war, and then marching towards war.)

Sec. Army recognizes ODU Army ROTC cadets for their bravery and sacrifice in private ceremony
[Hat Tip: Diogenes] [CBD]

TJM gives you a brief tour of his movie collection.

Forgotten 80s Mystery Click
One day I'm gonna write a poem in a letter
One day I'm gonna get that faculty together
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Oh, [Song Title], look out world, oh, you know I've got mine

US decimation of Iran's ICBM forces is due to Space Force's instant detection of launches -- and the launchers' hiding places -- and rapid counter-attack via missiles
AI is doing a lot of the work in analyzing images to find the exact hiding place of the launchers. Counter-strikes are now coming in four hours after a launch, whereas previously it might have taken days for humans to go over the imagery and data.

Robert Mueller, Former Special Counsel Who Probed Trump, Dies

“robert mueller just died,” trump wrote in a truth social post on march 21. “good, i’m glad he’s dead. he can no longer hurt innocent people! president donald j. trump.”